In Hingham, a 'modern museum' in the works at Old Derby Academy

A year-long, $2.9 million expansion and renovation will transform the former 1818 private academy into up to date display and educational space. It's expected to re-open in the fall of 2016.

Lane Lambert The Patriot Ledger @llambert_ledger

HINGHAM – There’s a clamor of construction activity these days atop the hill on Main Street – and when it’s done next fall, the historic Old Derby Academy won’t be the same.

The yellow frame front will be freshly bright. The first-floor visitor center will be more inviting, with digital research stations. Up on the previously empty second-floor, rotating exhibits of artifacts and archives will make Hingham’s four centuries of history come to life.

Out of sight in the rear, a new office wing will free up all that space. With all those changes, Executive Director Susan Buchanan said Old Derby can finally operate “like a modern museum.”

The long-awaited Heritage Museum project broke ground in November, after years of planning and a $2.9 million fundraising campaign. Selectman chairman Paul Healey is among those who are applauding it.

“It’s a great undertaking,” said Healey, who grew up in Hingham. “The academy is an iconic piece of the town’s history.”

The historical society also owns and runs the 1688 “Old Ordinary” house on nearby Lincoln Street.

Funding for the academy project includes $1 million from town Community Preservation Act, $600,000 from Greenbush trust fund, and a society donation drive. Sally Weston and Associates of Hingham is the architectural design firm. Acella Construction Corp. of Norwell is the main contractor.

The original Derby Academy opened in 1791 as the first coeducational, primary school in the new American nation. The school was named for its benefactor Sarah Derby, who included instructions for its creation in her will. Boys 12 and older attended. Female students were nine and older.

The present building dates from 1818. The Hingham Historical Society acquired the academy in 1966, when the school moved to its current location in the Broad Cove neighborhood.

Fifty years later, in 2016, the old school will be reborn as a 21st-century educational center for town residents and students, and visitors from far and wide.

“It was an educational institution, and now we get to do that,” Buchanan said. “It’s a perfect mission.”

Buchanan said the historical society will be able to display thousands of documents, photos, memorabilia and artifacts from archaeological digs, in ways that weren’t possible before.

The archives range from a chair and household mortar and pestle from England and daguerreotype photographs from the 1850s, to diaries, ledgers, and a set of 150 notebooks that chronicle the histories of 1,000 homes and families.

Buchanan said all those items will be featured year-round in rotating, second-floor exhibits, so school classes can visit more frequently. The room will also be available for private and community functions – a needed source of revenue.

The first such exhibit will highlight Hingham’s “bucket town” history, with an in-depth display of the 17th and 18-century cottage industry of wooden bucket making.

Buchanan said additional exhibits are already being planned for the town’s earliest years, when the first settlers lived close to local Native Americans, and for “then and now” explorations of historic homes and landmarks.

“We couldn’t do that before,” she said. “And you can’t do it just anywhere. We can, because so much of the town’s history is amongst us every day.”

Downstairs, meanwhile, the visitor center will feature stations for online genealogical research, and eventually for other documents and images as well.

For now, the academy’s handsome, Federal-style facade is wrapped in protective plastic. Both floors are filled with construction gear. The contractor’s crew is busily getting ready to lay the foundations for the rear wing – and come next fall, Buchanan said “there will be a great party” for the re-opening.